Prozac Nation (Movie Tie-In)
A memoir of sex, drugs, and depression indicts an overmedicated America as it chronicles the fortunes of a Harvard-educated child of divorce who lived in the fast lane as a music critic, always fighting her chronic depression. Tour.Elizabeth Wurtzel writes with her finger in the faint pulse of a generation whose ruling icons are Kurt Cobain, Xanax, and pierced tongues. A memoir of her bouts with depression and skirmishes with drugs, Prozac Nation still manages to be a witty and sharp account of the psychopharmacology of an era.
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars I rounded up from 3.5 stars.
I’m kinda drawn between liking this book and thinking that it’s spoiled girls account of what happens when she doesn’t get what she wants. She’s chemically imbalanced, intelligent, well-educated, has an addictive-personality, has parent issues, and is overall dysfunctional. It sounds like me and a million other middle-class people. But, maybe that’s why I kinda liked it. She has had incredible opportunities handed to her on a silver platter, including the publication and popularity of her book. I’m stuck on this one.
1 Stars literary dribble
Prozac Nation was the worst book I have ever read. It is 300 pages of her complaining about how horrible her life is. Being a Harvard and Yale Graduate, winning the Rolling Stone college journalism award, studying abroad in England, and having lots of friends would depress anyone. I doubt she is depressed, and is using her “disorder” to do be rude, and blow off her birthday parties, get drunk, and be a generally awful person.She is more a narrasistic self-asorbed attention seeker,then a suffering artist. The eplouge is the most offensive part of the whole book, where she compares herself to Kurt Cobain, and talks about how everyone else who is using Prozac is a “poser” and how she is the only one depressed enough to use is. What a load of crap.
5 Stars You either get it or you don’t.
Since everyone comes here after they have read the books, I will say a few words to them last. If you haven’t read it, its definitely worth the read, even though it’s not a glamorous or an enjoyable one in the traditional sense. That wasn’t the point when Elizabeth wrote it, and she says so in the epilogue, and I agree with her. Remember that she is 10, 12, and 13, when she is writing at the beginning, and this in itself is horrifying.
Taking one’s time getting through this book is essential, since different feeling pop up if you keep reading it straight through that are irritating and annoying. But this is essential to the main effect of this book. If you put the book down, and pick it up later, empathy will return. There is a lot of repetition in this book, but like I said, (ha, ha), this is really what gives it its power when you finish it. That’s what depression is like. A very important book. For those who already read it and don’t like it for its honesty you either get it or you don’t.
2 Stars Point Overly Made
Okay, depression sucks. I get that. I can’t imagine having to live with that kind of debilitation.
But this book made me want to shake the author for being so whiny, bratty, and just plain old selfish. The entire book is a re-telling of how she had been dealt a bad hand and how her life stunk, even though she was really no different from millions of other people. After the billionth time reading how much emotional pain she was in despite the fact she made it though HARVARD no less and was quite accomplished professionally- I started skimming.
And then, THEN she got ahold of Prozac and it all ended- as did the book, for that matter.
A memoir written in the 90’s, I’m sure it was difficult to have a self-cutting, emo personality back then. But today, being an eyelined, spiky haired emotional child is trendy- perhaps due in part to books such as these- and therefore has lost it’s impact.
In the end of the edition I read, the author threw in an Afterwards where she acknowledged how self-absorbed she was during her depression years and revealed that was the point of the novel.
Apparently it’s okay to be an emotionally spoiled child - if your disease is depression.
Point well made.
2 out of 5 from me. While an excellent window into the world of a depressive, like the emo’s Prozac Nation has spawned, it was a bit much.
4 Stars A culture of disease epitomized
This book was beautifully written and, I presume to say, relevant to everyone who might read it, not solely those suffering from a mental or mood disorder. That being said, though, it offers nothing for resolution or prescription. There is no process of self-improvement in the book only pitiful self-absorbtion and -lamenting. Wurtzel has truly brought the honesty about depression (and manic-depression, which is a wholy different beast) out of the proverbial closet but in doing so has contributed nothing to society at large.
Where is the merit in a book so clearly didactic with nothing to teach? When did we begin worshipping at the altar of disease and dysfunction?
Filed under: Mental Health Book Reviews